Saint Laurent's K-Way Jacket Is as French as Boeuf Bourguignon
Saint Laurent's Rive Droite lifestyle label is still the source of the luxury label's most intriguing offerings, Basquiat skimboards to exquisite home goods all realized for the sake of luxe living. Rive Droite just dropped a plethora of fancy late summer wares, notably including a collaboration with a classically French company.
There's a whole host of graphic surfboards, bags, hats, swimsuits, tees, and pottery up on the site and at the Rive Droite stores in Paris and Los Angeles, curated by creative director Anthony Vaccarello to drive home the boho mentality at the core of his Saint Laurent.
I mean, if you aren't noshing atop $2,700 Emaux de Longwy plates, lounging on $210 pool floats, and showcasing $4,500 skateboard triptychs, you're not enjoying an SLP summer.
Key to the latest Rive Droite drop is this "VHS Sunset" print, which graces everything from postcards to skimboards to a special jacket designed in partnership with K-Way.
That windbreaker is, in particular, an oddity: most of the Rive Droite collaborations bring in co-conspirators in realms relatively foreign to Saint Laurent's own output, like notebooks, vases, and dishes. At face value, the K-Way jacket feels off because it's a cost-effective brand, something that seems foreign to the realm occupied by SLP's well-heeled clientele — plus, you'd think SLP could create its own version.
However, the appeal comes from the label's legacy and inherent fashionably unfashionable ease.
K-Way, for those unaware, has been around since the mid-60s, when brand founder Léon-Claude Duhamel envisioned a packable windbreaker for city-slickers seeking to combat the rain without toting an umbrella all day.
Since then, K-Way has enjoyed ebbing relevance throughout Europe. Though its signature layering piece still weighs in at around $100, K-Way still enjoys a post-normcore, kitschy appeal that's boosted by occasional collaborations with tastemakers like colette, Marc Jacobs, and Maurizio Cattelan.
Maybe it's the Frenchness, but that effortless indifference to conventional cool ensures that the K-Way windbreaker — including the $675 collaborative iteration available on Saint Laurent's website — isn't afflicted by fleeting trends.
